Social-emotional development includes the experience, expression and management of the child's emotions and the ability to establish positive and rewarding relationships with others. It covers both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes.
The core characteristics of emotional development include the ability to identify and understand one's own feelings, accurately read and understand emotional states in others, handle strong emotions and its expression in a constructive way, regulating one's own behavior, developing empathy for others ... and establishing and maintaining relationships.
Emotions from babies
Babies experience, express, and perceive emotions before fully understanding them. By learning to recognize, label, manage, and communicate their emotions and to perceive and attempt to understand the emotions of others, children develop skills that connect them with family, peers, teachers, and the community.
These growing capacities help young children to become proficient in negotiating increasingly complex social interactions, to participate effectively in group relationships and activities, and to reap the benefits of social support crucial to healthy human development and functioning.
Healthy socio-affective development in childhood
Healthy social and emotional development for infants and toddlers takes place in an interpersonal context: that of positive and ongoing relationships with familiar and caring adults. Young children are particularly attuned to social and emotional stimulation. Even newborns seem to pay more attention to stimuli that resemble faces.
They also prefer the voices of their mothers to the voices of other women. Through parenting, adults support babies' first experiences of emotional regulation. Responsive care helps babies begin to regulate their emotions now develop a sense of predictability, security, and responsiveness in their social settings.
Early relationships are so important to developing babies. In the early years, stable and consistent educational relationships are the key to healthy growth, development, and learning. In other words, high-quality relationships increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for young children. Experiences with family members and teachers provide an opportunity for young children to learn about social relationships and emotions through exploration and predictable interactions.
Related emotion and cognition
Emotion and cognition are deeply interrelated processes. The neural mechanisms underlying emotional regulation may be the same as the underlying cognitive processes. Emotion and cognition work together, jointly reporting the child's impressions of influencing situations and behavior.
Most of the learning in the early years occurs in the context of emotional supports. The rich interpenetrations of emotions and cognitions establish the main psychic scripts for the life of each child. Together, emotion and cognition contribute to the processes of attention, decision-making, and learning. What's more, cognitive processes, such as decision making, are affected by emotion.
The brain structures involved in the neural circuits of cognition influence emotion and vice versa. Emotions and social behaviors affect a young child's ability to persist in goal-oriented activities, seek help when needed and participate in and benefit from relationships.
Young children who exhibit healthy social, emotional, and behavioral adjustment are more likely to do well academically in elementary school.
Interactions with adults
Interactions with adults are a frequent and regular part of daily life for babies. Babies up to three months of age have been shown to be able to discriminate between the faces of unfamiliar adults. The bases that describe interactions with adults and relationships with adults are interrelated. On the whole, they give a picture of healthy social and emotional development that is based on a supportive social environment established by adults.
Children develop the ability to respond to and engage with adults first through predictable interactions in close relationships with parents or other caring adults at home and away from home. Children use and develop skills learned through close relationships to interact with less familiar adults in their lives. When interacting with adults, they learn about social and emotional skills.
These interactions form the basis of the relationships that are established between teachers and children in the classroom or at home and are related to the stage of development of children. How teachers interact with children is at the heart of early childhood education.
Relationships with adults
Close relationships with adults who provide constant care strengthen children's ability to learn and develop. In addition, relationships with parents, other family members, caregivers, and teachers provide the key context for babies' social-emotional development.
These special relationships influence the emerging sense of self and understanding of others. Babies use relationships with adults in many ways: to make sure they are safe, to help ease distress, to help with emotion regulation, and for social approval or encouragement. Establishing close relationships with adults is related to the emotional security of children, the sense of themselves and the evolutionary understanding of the world around them.
Everything discussed so far is also accompanied by the recognition of one's own identity, with the learning of various skills, with the relationship between equals of children, with the development of empathy and assertiveness to maintain good interpersonal relationships, regulation emotional to have a good mental balance, impulse control or social understanding ... all this will help to have a good socio-affective development in children from early childhood, and where parents and adults have the primary role in everything.